Linear slides are used for literally thousands of applications. Some of the most basic applications are found in conventional furniture drawers wherein the linear slide is the mechanism upon which the drawers slide relative to the desk, countertop, or the like. In addition to such furniture applications, linear slides are used in a number of industrial settings, particularly in conjunction with machine tools. Very often a machine bed will need to slide axially back and forth as the machining operation is performed.
With regard to the machine tool application, it can therefore readily be seen by one of ordinary skill in the art that the linear slide mechanism must be fabricated to move along an axis with practically no play or deflection away from the axis of the linear slide. Any such play or movement would necessarily detrimentally effect the machining operation in that the machining operation is typically computer controlled, and any movement in the linear slide mechanism would therefore result in mis-alignment of the machine tool and the workpiece.
With that stated as a background, it can be seen that one possible option would be to fabricate the linear slide mechanism such that the axis of the linear slide maintains a very tight tolerance relative to a desired axis. In other words, the rails of the slide can be manufactured such that a constant distance is maintained therebetween. However, such an option is obviously difficult to meet and increases the cost of fabrication. Moreover, the rails must be continually adjusted as the machine is used over time due to misalignment resulting from heavy loads or shock loads. In addition, the linear rail system can quite often be deformed due to thermal expansion of the machine as it is repeatedly used.
A need therefore exists for a linear slide system which allows the rollers of the sliding body to maintain constant engagement with the raceways of the rail system to thereby ensure that the sliding body linearly translates across the given axis with substantially no deflection.